Riobamba & Chimborazo

Wow, it sure feels good to be done with classes! Tuesday was our last day and we finished up with our final presentations on Wednesday. After that on Thursday we had a field trip to one of our teacher’s houses in the country (yes, her family has a lot of houses) and we cooked an American meal together for our roommates. Now we are just travelling as part of a two-week travel practicum and it will be 8 weeks before we have classes again. It’s like having a half summer in between semesters!

We’ll have two weeklong trips, with a short stop back at the Seminary in between for graduation. Both Gustavo and Yoan (my roommates) are graduating so that will be cool to see. Our first week trip is to Riobamba and the oriente (Amazon Jungle), and our second trip is to Guayaquil and the Galapagos Islands. A few other people came along with us on this trip, and I’m really glad that Yoan is one of them. I decided to bring my computer with me, so I’ll try to update my blog more often than I have been. Sometimes we have wifi at our hostels.

Anyway, we started our first trip off by heading south to Riobamba, the city below Volcán Chimborazo, the tallest mountain in Ecuador at 20,565 feet. It was a long van ride, but we stayed in the sierra so there weren’t any crazy elevation changes. On the way down we stopped in Latacunga had chugchucara, a traditional (and random) mixed plate of fried pork, potatoes, and bananas, corn, popcorn, and sweet meat pie. Then we had homemade ice cream and I chose avocado, which had an amazing creamy texture. After we got to Riobamba, we went to a giant fruit and vegetable market, which serves as a distribution center for the rest of the country. That was the most produce I’d ever seen in one place and the food was being sold in bulk for rock bottom prices. The guys walked around town afterward and we found a meat market, a bakery with pineapple pie, and an old-fashioned soda fountain where we had some good batidos.


Left: In Front of Chimborazo. Right: NILI Jumping Pic.
---More pictures can be found here.

This morning (Saturday) our whole group headed up to the base of Chimborazo and trekked around below the refuges. Overall we started at around 14,700’ (when the van couldn’t make it any higher) and Thad, Yoan, and I hiked up just beyond the first refuge at 15,800’. It was so nice out with no wind or clouds, and it was really sunny and warm. I spent most of the hike in a t-shirt and shorts, and had to keep reapplying SPF 30 so I wouldn’t burn. But my favorite part was playing in the snow with Yoan, who had never seen it before in his life. He’s from tropical Venezuela and it’s funny how we can take things like that for granted. Like a little kid, he was so excited to see it and really liked throwing snowballs. Plus he could throw them pretty well since he played pro baseball back home as an outfielder. Thad and I had fun showing him how to make snow angels and other snow activities. And when we got far enough ahead of the group, he had a crazy awesome idea: take all of our clothes off and take pictures. (You won’t find those on Facebook.)


Left: Yoan and I. Right: A More Appropriate Picture.
---More pictures can be found here.

Tomorrow we head east to Shell, and there are a lot of activities planned on the way into the jungle. We are also flying small Cessna planes into the Huaroni village sometime early next week. (Those are the fierce people with spears and blowguns who became infamous after attacking a missionary party in the 1950s.) I’ll try to write another update in the next few days, but I doubt there’s a whole lot of places to connect to the internet in the Amazon. Hasta luego!

A Weekend of Mountaineering

This weekend Thad and I had our trip to Cotopaxi and it was an amazing experience. We decided to climb this mountain for a number of reasons. It’s the second tallest mountain in Ecuador at 19,348 feet, but it’s not as technical as other huge mountains. (You don’t have to know a whole lot about mountaineering, you just have to be in really good shape.) It’s one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, and because of the equitorial bulge, it’s also one of the farthest points from the center of the earth. Also, it’s an Ecuadorian icon and the most climbed mountain in the Andes because of this and it’s easy accesibility.


Volcán Cotopaxi: (Not my picture, it was too cloudy.)

Saturday morning we met up with our guide in Quito and headed down to the national park. Segundo was cool but he didn’t really remind us of a mountain guide. He spoke barely any English (except for swear words and glacier commands) and talked more about hot girls than anything else. But he was hilarious and fun to be around.

First on the itenerary was to climb Volcán Rumiñahui, a fifteener inside the park for more acclimation. We drove up to a lake at about 12,600’ and started trekking uphill toward the mountain. It was cloudy and we could barely see the peak but the surrounding area was still really pretty. We hiked through a lot of páramo grass and wound our way up part of the crater rim, but unfortunately we had to turn back at the rocky part of the mountain (just over 13,800’). It was raining pretty hard and there were some thunderstorms, which are dangerous in climbing that kind of rock. Originally we were going to rope up and scramble to the top, so that was disappointing.


Left: Nearby Rumiñahui. Right: Hiking.
---More pictures can be found here.

During the hike Segundo kept asking us if we needed any breaks, but we felt fine with the altitude. He told us we were in a lot better shape than most people, and our first forty minutes of hiking can take others up to two hours with the elevation. Meanwhile our clothes were getting soaked and I realized the jacket they gave me was really cheap because it was soaking wet on the inside. The last part of the decent turned into a slippery swamp and it was hard getting back to the car.

Afterward we headed for a lodge in the park that was just over 12,200’. We had our own cabin, but there was no heat or electricity and it got pretty cold. We tried to dry our clothes with a fire in the fireplace but this didn’t work out too well. Finally we resorted to sleeping with our wet clothes because we didn’t bring very much. That wasn’t too fun, but at least they were somewhat dry in the morning. The lodge had good food and we were served coca tea along with our meals. (It’s popular in mountanous countries and apparently it can help altitude sickness.)

After breakfast we took off for the José Rivas Refuge, on the side of Cotopaxi. It’s really popular among park visitors but it’s mainly for climbers staying the night. We parked the car in a parking area at about 14,700’ and then we made the hike up to the refuge, which was over a thousand feet higher. This took about forty minutes, and we had to carry full backpacks with gear and full summit packs. This was a lot of weight and it felt good to get to the top. There were a lot of interesting people there from all over the world who were really into mountaineering. We were supposed to hike up to the glacier and learn some techniques for crampons (spikes for ice and snow) and ice axe, but there was a rainstorm and we weren’t able to. We didn’t want to be stuck with a bunch of wet clothes again. Segundo told us it was easy enough to figure out, so we felt alright about it. At least we'd have a guide with us on the mountain.


Left: Finally Made It! Right: Refuge Trail.
---More pictures can be found here.

It was cool staying at the refuge but insanely hard to sleep. On top of trying to sleep in really high altitude, there were probably 40 people staying in the same room and there wasn’t a whole lot of personal space. Plus we had to go to bed super early so we could wake up around midnight, which is the best time for climbing before the snow starts to melt in the sun. By the time the first alarm clock went off around 11 pm, I barely got over an hour of sleep and I couldn’t get much more with all of the noise of people getting ready. We stayed in our sleeping bags until Segundo woke us up around midnight, and after breakfast we found out we would be the last group to leave the refuge.

We started the climb at about 1:15 am and trudged uphill in the snow with our headlamps. It felt good to get going, but it was hard on such little sleep. We had a pretty good pace though and even passed a couple groups in the beginning. After about an hour, we arrived at a glacier where we had to put on our crampons and a lot of other people were there too. We roped up quickly and passed them while they were still starting on the ice. It wasn’t too hard walking in the crampons, but it got more and more challenging as the mountain got steeper. It got really steep, but we didn’t need a whole lot of rest and kept passing groups. The glaciers and crevices weren't too hard to navigate, but I lost my balance a couple times trying to toe in with the crampons. Finally we passed the last group and were leading the way. I was sucking air big time at the top, but kept plugging away. It’s crazy how hard altitude gets as you keep getting higher and higher.

We finally got to the summit at 5:45 am, just as the sun was rising. It was cloudy though and we couldn’t see much. (I made a snow angel at the top too.) Our ascent only took four and a half hours, which was crazy fast. (My guidebook says that route takes 5-7.) I still couldn’t believe that we passed everyone because some groups left almost an hour earlier than us. This felt really surreal and we had no idea we would do so well. Other people were impressed and congratulated us as we were coming down, and that felt really good. A couple of guides were even surprised too. There were people with a lot more mountaineering experience than we had, but we were in better altitude shape. It helps living at over 9,000 for three months and running and hiking a lot.


Left: At the Top! Right: Snow Angel at 19,348 feet.
---More pictures can be found here.

The descent wasn’t so fun though. I got altitude sick on the way down and had a horrible naseua headache. (I figured this was a combination of the fast ascent and little sleep.) Because of this I had to take a lot more breaks going down. It was cool to see everything in the daylight though and there were a lot of ice crevices that we couldn’t see at night. I wanted to take a lot of pictures, but my hand went numb everytime I took my glove off. Finally we got to the bottom of the last glacier and decided to slide down to the reguge. We did this sitting down with our ice axes as brakes and we were able to go pretty fast. Afterward we hiked back to the car and drove back to Quito. We got back at noon and still had the whole day!

It’s crazy how fast the semester has gone. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is our last day of class and we have our final presentations on Wednesday. After that we have a field trip on Thursday and two weeks of travel after that. The first week will be to Riobamba and the oriente (Amazon), and the last week will be in Guayaquil and the Galapagos. This will be a lot of fun and it’s hard to fathom that I’m flying home in 18 days. Anyway, hasta luego.

Hiking in the Andes

Left: On the rim of Pasochoa's crater. Right: The descent.

We’ve been in the city a lot and Thad (another NILI) and I have yearned to see more of the outdoors. This was our first free weekend so yesterday we decided to start by hiking Volcán Pasochoa (13,778 ft). We didn’t realize how long it would actually take to get to get there, and we left later in the morning after his roommate, Victor decided to come. Even though the mountain is only 20 miles south of Quito, it still took us three buses and a 4x4, about three hours each way. This is because we live in the north part of the oblong city. The park entrance fee was $2 for locals and $10 for foreigners, and this seemed ridiculous! Thad and I pulled out our censos (Ecuadorian ID Cards) and told the lady that we were living in Quito, and luckily she only charged us the local price. Score!

Summit Post (the mountaineering website) lists Pasochoa as a five-hour hike with 2,700’ elevation gain, but the bus dropped us off near the lower park entrance and we ended up on the eight-hour trail that was 4,800’ to the top. We didn’t have time to summit before dark, but we still had an awesome five-hour hike and made it to 12,400’ (about 3,500' up), and we hiked along the crater rim and final stretch of the mountain. The Andes are really beautiful and there is a lot of vegetation on the volcanoes. We want to do a lot more hiking here, but now know that we have to leave a lot earlier in the day. It would be a lot easier to have a car, but we both agreed that it would be too scary to drive here. The trip home was interesting though. We had hired a pickup truck to drive us four miles down a dirt/stone road to the park entrance but there were no vehicles waiting for us when we got back. We hiked about two miles (partly uphill) before we saw a passing truck and hitchhiked. We were so glad to get a ride because it got dark as soon as we made it back to the main road.

The first bus from Amaguaña to La Marín (South Quito terminal) was very strange. I was joined by a drunk guy who repeatedly introduced himself (five or six times) and asked me my name and a lot of other questions. Whenever there was a break in the conversation he held out his hand asking if we were friends and I would say yes just to humor him. In a drunken moment he thought Thad was my girlfriend and tried to climb across me (awkwardly grabbing my leg) to kiss him on the cheek, a traditional Ecuadorian greeting. After being rejected, he asked if Thad was Chinese and introduced himself again. A woman with a baby got on the bus and he got up to give her his seat, but that wasn’t much better. With the baby partly on my lap she began to breastfeed and I had no choice but to stare ahead at my drunk friend who was dancing to the salsa music.

When she left, he reclaimed his seat and began the whole process again. I decided to become more of a clueless gringo and “couldn’t” understand a lot of what he said. He got frustrated a few times and rattled on about how he wished he could speak to me in English. The only word he could say was “goodbye,” which was sweet to hear after we arrived in his neighborhood. Afterward a few kids sat next to me and started asking each other how to say things to me in English, and they quizzed each other on what the US was like. When I couldn’t keep a straight face any longer I told them they could just ask me, and I was flooded with questions. We finally arrived at the transfer station and boarded a trolley bus that was a lot more normal. The third bus, however, included a pissed off old man who started yelling at the driver after he stalled the bus on a hill. Soon he was yelling again and the driver stopped the bus to storm back and get in his face. Other passengers were yelling at the old guy but I couldn’t understand what they were all saying. Reluctantly, he sat down and we continued on as if nothing happened. Finally, a fourth bus home was our lucky number seven for the day. It was so good to finally get back to the campus!

Here are a couple other things that happened this week:

On Wednesday we had a field trip to the Ballet Jacchigua, a cultural interpretive dance. Before entering we had to have a Latino buy all of our tickets so we wouldn’t be charged a lot as foreigners. (They can really make money off us…) It was a big production, with live Andean folk music, 90 dancers, and over 6,000 lbs of costumes and props, but it was a small atmosphere of less than a hundred people. Beforehand I thought it would be boring, but it was really an interesting expression of their society. It’s funny because a lot of them were foreigners and after spending a month with only Latinos, I get culture shock from seeing other white people. When I told my teacher this she mentioned that I haven't visited Gringolandia, the local name for La Mariscal, Quito's tourist-filled district.

On Tuesday we began our weekly service project, working with children at the local dump. Many families lived there before the government deemed it unsafe, and now there is a daycare for children of employees that is run by volunteers. The kids (aged 4-10) were definitely a challenge, and you can tell they have harder lives at home. The boys didn’t talk at all, even when we asked them questions like their names. For the most part I played Lincoln Logs with a group of them, and a kid fully dressed as Spiderman kept jacking my house segments and adding them onto his. Another kid whacked me on the head with a giant log and I did my best to scold him, but that was difficult in Spanish. We played with them for a couple hours and learned that it will be an interesting work experience. It will definitely be good to put on my teaching resume though.

Well, that's all for this week. Hasta Luego!